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One by one, the town’s howler monkeys, overcome with dehydration and exhaustion, were falling from the trees like apples, their limp bodies smacking the ground as temperatures sizzled past 43C (110F) in spring last year.
But for those in the tropics, the findings were sobering: extreme heat had slashed tropical bird populations by 25% to 38% over the past 70 years. Tropical songbirds, they found, were hit hardest.
The losses in the tropics have been so profound, in part, because species there are already living near their limit of heat tolerance, Kotz says. At the same time, birds in tropical regions are experiencing dangerously hot days about 10 times more often than they did in the past.
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